The small made-in-India aircraft Dornier hopes to become UDAN's wings

A small aircraft harbours big ambitions of making the government’s UDAN dream soar. The twin-engine, 17-seater, made-in-India Dornier 228, which has for years been a trusted ride of soldiers, bringing them home from remote locations where airstrips are small or semi-prepared, has been on commercial jaunts in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam for Alliance Air since April.

It’s a first for a made-in-India aircraft to fly commercial. So far, the Dornier 228 (Do-228) was being manufactured under licence from Swiss aerospace engineering and defence company RUAG, with Hin­dustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) supplying the fuselage, wings and tail unit from its facility in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. The aircraft would then be assembled at RUAG’s facility in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.

“A major fillip to HAL’s plan to field Do-228 for regional connectivity was the government’s UDAN programme,” says R Madhavan, chairman and managing director, HAL, India’s largest defence public sector undertaking that is behind the homemade aircraft. UDAN, acronym for Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik (let the common citizen of the country fly), aims to make air travel affordable and widespread by connecting unserved airports and airstrips across India.

There are “more than 150 airports­/­airstrips suitable for less than 20-seater (Do-228 class) aircraft only,” says Mad­havan. “This provides an opportunity for the deployment of Do-228 by airline operators on routes connecting such airports/airstrips.” The Northeast, “with its difficult hilly terrain and the geographical advantage air travel has over other alternative modes of travel (rail or road)”, was an obvious area to begin with.

 

Madhavan adds, “In addition to this, Do-228 aircraft can aptly be deployed to connect various inter- and intra-state locations and reduce travel time significantly. It is the best flying machine to connect tier 2 and 3 cities to the state capital or major cities.” He is confident that the regional deployment of two civil Do-228 aircraft by Alliance Air will attract other operators to venture in the regional aviation market and open up scope for more of these aircraft to be delivered within a short lead time. Another plus is the “assurance for life-time product support” from HAL.

This is not the first time the Dornier has found itself carrying the weight of such expectations on its wings. From 1985 to the early 1990s, regional airline Vayu­doot used it to service 100-odd airports across the country. Do-228 made for nearly half of Vayudoot’s fleet of 21 and was the face of the airline. Back then it was a German machine. But the flying wasn’t a breeze. There were multiple rep­orts of engine failure during flight — six within two years of the airline’s inception, reported India Today in April 1987 in an article titled “Vayudoot airline likely to ground entire fleet of 10 planes due to engine tro­ubles”. It didn’t help when angry Con­g­ress (I) MPs moved a calling attention mo­tion and one of them referred to Vay­udoot as ‘Yamdoot’ (God of Death), the article added. Two years later, on Sept­e­mber 23, 1989, a flight from Pune to Hyd­e­rabad crashed, killing all 11 on board. Vayudoot wound up in April 1997. And in 2008, RUAG Airspace and HAL signed an agreement during the Berlin Air Show to jointly manufacture a new generation of Dornier 228 aircraft in Germany.

Coming back to the made-in-India Do-228, which have been manufactured through internal funding. “The aircraft are made in India from raw material stage with certificate of airworthiness issued by the Directorate General of Civil Avi­ation (DGCA),” Madhavan says. 

He swears by its safety standards. “The aircraft is integrated with terrain awareness warning system, Gagan-compliant GPS, emergency locator transmitter, long-range weather radar, traffic and collision avoidance system, and reduced flying workload.” Its high-wing design and robust landing system, he adds, provide good visibility as well as capability for smooth operations from semi-prepared runways. “The twin engines in the aircraft are capable of handling single engine operations as well.”

Adds an Alliance Air spokesperson, “With the aircraft’s advanced avionics, pilots are able to maintain superior situational awareness throughout the flight, combining safety and efficiency to the highest levels.”

The two aircraft leased to Alliance Air have conventional cockpits. But the upcoming aircraft have been upgraded with a fully digital glass cockpit with state-of-the-art equipment on a par with similar platforms available globally, adds Madhavan.

While the Do-228 is equipped for night flying, “most airfields in the Northeast are ill-equipped for commercial operations post-sunset”, says an Alliance Air spokesperson.

About Do-228-trained pilots and crew, Alliance Air says the airfields that are ai­m­ed to be served by the aircraft are operated only by Indian Air Force (IAF). “Hen­ce, with the support of the civil aviation and defence ministries, we have on deputation five IAF pilots with current experience in the ‘area of interest’. These pilots are duly trained and certified by DGCA.”

The initial set of cabin crew was trained by HAL and cleared for independent operations after DGCA inspection. “This set of crew,” says the Alliance Air spokesperson, “is being utilised to further train additional crew in-house to build the desired bench strength.”

HAL, meanwhile, also has DGCA app­roval for training of aircraft maintenance engineers and ground crew. “And considering the suitability of the aircraft for regional civil aviation,” Madhavan says, “HAL is manufacturing another batch of six aircraft for deployment.”

Those who’ve flown in a Dornier know the journey can be a little noisy — and ba­sic to a fault. It’s not the quietest airc­r­aft, after all; nor is it the fanciest. Madh­avan says that’s been taken care of. “The aircraft has been installed with new five-bladed composite in place of four-bladed metallic propellers,” he says, explaining, “Its advantages are reductions in weight, and in external and internal noise level, faster engine start, less lubrication requi­r­ement and almost vibration-free propel­ler operations.” The look and feel, too, have been worked on, with ergonomically designed seats and attractive livery for en­hanced passenger comfort and imp­ro­ved aesthetics, he adds.

The engine has also been upgraded, says the HAL CMD, to allow for improved performance, increased life as well as to reduce hourly operating cost — key to bringing down flying cost if UDAN is to keep its promise of making air travel affordable for the common citizen.